August

 

A very warm August. So warm that I could hardly bear to let the sunlight into the house, it heated the rooms up so much. By keeping doors, windows and curtains shut, I managed to keep the living room temperature down to just under 80°. I got my foot spa out and filled it with cold water. My own personal paddling pool. 

Edd and Richard both had birthdays. Can't believe Richard is a year old! Where has the time gone?

August was Olympics month, and Team GB did very well, winning even more medals than they had at the London games. 

We got a new satellite TV dish and box in time for the Olympics (although not in time for the opening ceremony) and can now record shows that clash with ones we're watching. How modern we feel!

I went out exactly three times this month. Two Friday concerts at Charlton House and one live screening ( Richard III withRalph  Feinnes and Vanessa Redgrave). The cinema was in Greenwich, so we went to Jamie's Italian to eat afterwards. I did have other things that I could have gone to, but to be honest, didn't really feel very well. 

I did a LOT of reading. I finished Ulysses, which left me no more enlightened than I had been before I started it. I read two modern rewritings of Shakespeare; the taming of the shrew (Vinegar Girl) and the merchant of Venice (Shylock is my name).  The first made me angry, as the play always does, the second left me vaguely unsatisfied. I'd hoped for a better ending for Shylock, which didn't happen. The other books were three crime novels by authors new to me, and a very pretentious "literary" novel about one of Caravaggio's duels, which left me wanting to throw the book in the dustbin. Sadly, it was the kindle version, so I could only consign it to the cloud.

I tried using a screen to cover my bedroom window as the curtain rail was seriously in danger of falling down in the night, leaving me exposed to the gaze of the neighbours across the street. It didn't really work well. Bex tried re-fixing the rail, but it didn't work. A new approach is needed. Watch this space.